Japan’s Rootless and Restless Workers

Japan’s Rootless and Restless Workers

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A dark suit jacket hangs by a shaded window, beneath a portrait of a smiling, well-dressed executive.

The man is Akira Teranishi, a Japanese salary man who killed himself 17 years ago, leaping from a building in Tokyo. It was Valentine’s Day.

“I gave him chocolate,” his wife, Emiko, told the photographer Shiho Fukada when they met at her home in Tokyo. “I asked him if he could take a day off.”

Ms. Fukada asked if she could see something Ms. Teranishi’s husband had left behind. The jacket had been his uniform — the clothing that transformed him from a man into a man with a job, one supporting his family. Like legions of others like him, the suit was his identity. Read More